The freshly retired Sonnen doesn’t see why Jones should ever have that unfortunate downward elbow loss to Matt Hamill overturned.
A lot of steam has built up over the past couple of weeks to have Jon Jones’ sole loss on his record expunged. And we get it. When the dude has a 24-1 record and the only loss is a janky defeat to Matt Hamill over illegal downward elbows, some people get sick of explaining the asterisk and would prefer the record reflect a truer reality.
At least it should be another No Contest, like Jon’s latest win over Daniel Cormier was ruled … right? Well, some still disagree with that as well, including former “Bones” opponent Chael Sonnen. He explained his reasoning in a new video.
“Joe Rogan specifically is just appalled by the 12 to 6 elbow rule,” Sonnen said. “Joe Rogan is not without good reason to be appalled and the reason given was this: the NSAC saw some video of a karate master stacking bricks and using an elbow to break them. And the elbow was the 12-6 elbow … And they deemed it was just too brutal of a technique.”
“It’s still the rule,” Sonnen continued. “They never needed to share with us in the first place why they made that rule. That was their biggest mistake. Make the rule and move on. Instead they shared it with us, which of course then made themselves look like fools. Either way, the rule got written down and the athletes agreed to abide by the rules. So when Jon threw those elbows and they absolutely went into the back of the head of Matt Hamill. They were completely illegal.”
“In addition to that just being the way it is, you then are left with referee’s discretion where the referee can decide ‘Well yeah it landed in an illegal spot but that was because Hamill was moving. Hamill moved into it, it wasn’t Jon’s fault’ or vice versa. But either way it is a decision made game time, meaning on the fly, in the moment, and then you have to live with it.”
”I’m just not aware of any remedy after the fact,” he added. “There is an appeals process, especially in Nevada. I don’t know what that rule states, but I think it has to be done within two weeks. If i’m wrong, it’s 30 days. Either way, this has been years and years and years.”
That’s key right there: even if it was the wrong decision, it’s been way too long to open up the books again and change the results. How many guys are there that had their UFC wins turned from wins to No Contests over marijuana violations? Should we go back and restore their victories now that states are finally starting to treat weed in a semi-sane fashion?
Actually, we wouldn’t be against that at all, but you know it’s not going to happen. So why should we once again give Jon Jones some sort of unique treatment? How about we just take into consideration his mysterious reduced USADA sentence and picogram allowance and call it an administrative wash.